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Winner of the Cheval Noir Award and Best Actor Award at the 2014 Fantasia International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival and the 2014 Camera Japan Festival, and the official selection at both the 2014 Hawaii International Film Festival and the 2014 Shanghai International Film Festival. Read more…

Good Luck girl also known as Binbogami ga! translated as “This Damn God of Poverty!” based on the comedy manga series by Yoshiaki Sukeno, originally published in Jump Square magazine between July 2008 and August 2013. The anime adaptation aired in Japan from September 26, 2012 showing its popularity before the manga ended.

The first five minutes sets the scene in a land of gods who watch earth and its inhabitants. An imbalance of luck has over flowed in an area where popular, pretty, wealthy girl Ichigo Sakura is sucking the luck from Read more…

‘First it started with a Game’ as the intro goes it was the vast popularity of the game series following the gentleman Professor Layton on his quests to solve puzzles with his apprentice Luke. What made the game stand out against competitor titles was the slick animation between puzzles. People were so charmed by the character designs it shortly after became a movie.

The movie begins with an introduction about the series for new watchers and I know quite few people who indeed picked up this title from conventions for the art alone, not surprising as it was produced by Read more…

‘Ask This of Rikyu’, a film directed by Mitsutoshi Tanaka and distributed by Toei, had its first World Premiere at the 37th Montreal World Film Festival in September 2013 sharing the Best Artistic Contribution Award with ‘Landes’ by François-Xavier Vives. It was nominated for the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year and won the Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction.

The film, based on the novel of the same name by Kenichi Yamamoto which won the Naoki Literary Prize in 2009, stars the renowned Read more…

In popular manga and anime Tokyo Babylon, there is a character called Seishiro Sakurazuka who is a dangerous onmyoji posing as a friendly vet. He kills his enemies and buries their bodies under a huge cherry tree; in fact it is the only cherry tree that bears deep red blossom and even redder fruit. In The Cherry Blossom Murder, Londoner, Josie discovers a body under the cherry blossom and goes in search of the killer.

Josie enjoys all the pomp and circumstance of Tammy Izumo’s Tea Party, but doesn’t quite fit into Japanese society. She is a friendly sort, but Read more…

Famed the world over for their intricate beauty, Japanese dolls (ningyo) have played an important role in Japanese art and culture. Ningyo: The Art of the Japanese Doll (read review here) is the first comprehensive book on antique Japanese dolls and figurines published in English. The book focuses on dolls in six categories:

The first comprehensive book on antique Japanese dolls published in English!

NINGYO: The Art of The Japanese Doll, written by Alan Scott Pate, the leading expert on Japanese dolls in the US, is a stunning hardback coffee-table book published by Tuttle Publishing that focuses on an area of Japanese culture little explored by westerners.

More than a plaything, the Japanese doll is a decorative object that is the central focus of many festivals like the Hina Matsuri (the Girl’s Day Festival) which takes place in Japan every year in March. To the world outside Japan, Hina dolls with their elaborate well-detailed costumes are Read more…

Written by Yoshindo Yoshihara (a third generation swordsmith) with Leon and Hiroko Kapp, The Art of the Japanese Sword is a beautiful large format book (effectively printed on glossy black paper with white text) that focuses on the production and understanding of the symbolic steel weapon once used by samurai and now admired by art collectors all round the world as an object of perfection, although many people use them to practice traditional Japanese martial arts like Iaido (the art of drawing the sword). Read more…

The first movie from the critically acclaimed Fairy Tail anime franchise!

For a series that has been long running, this is the first time there has ever been a full length movie made of it. So for the fans this has been a long time coming. The many adventures and different characters are what make this series a success as well as the other lands with different guilds which are covered in the series. In Phoenix Priestess the Fairy Tail Guild have to deal with a threat to the entire world due to one man, a cruel prince who wants to get his hand on the other half of the Read more…

Yumi Hata has returned to Tokyo after a stint in the U.S. She works as a translator whose only friend in the whole of the city is Rika. She keeps her from the total isolation she feels during her stay, but when she is found dead, Yumi feels alone again, the isolation and loneliness creeping up on her.

For most people, knowing a friend is what can make them question why someone so dear would kill herself and Yumi does this as she remembers what kind of girl Rika was. Rika had no problems, was happy and had no suicidal tendencies as far as she was aware. She could be wrong, but Read more…

Packed with wild ideas incorporating some of the most imaginative killings you’ll ever see on celluloid!

Delirious, violent and bizarre, the perverse 1967 cult crime thriller Branded to Kill is widely regarded as being director Seijun Suzuki’s magnum opus, influencing major filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, John Woo and Martin Scorsese. It stands out as being both a nonsensical and exceptional piece of film art that has to be seen to be believed.

Jo Shishido plays professional hitman Goro Hanada aka No 3 Killer, the third best killer on the best killers list, who gets sexually aroused whenever he smells and eats freshly cooked rice – a fetish hated by his Read more…

The story follows the escapades of Jonah, Lehm, Valmet and Lutz who all work for Koko Hekmatyar, an arms dealer who needs someone like Jonah on her team. Koko works with the HCLI an international shipping corporation who secretly deals in the arms trade. As she works with them, she sells weapons in secret in several countries while trying to avoid the local police as her work is regarded as illegal. Her team she is always seen with are bodyguards who were found in the military, but her newest colleague has another motive for joining them. He wants to find where the Read more…

An exhibition at the British Museum in Room 3 supported by The Asahi Shimbun. 19 June – 17 August 2014

To coincide with the publication of the British Museum’s new book, ‘Netsuke: 100 miniature masterpieces from Japan’, by Noriko Tsuchiya, the museum is hosting a small exhibition, ‘Dressed to Impress: Netsuke and Japanese men’s Fashion’ sponsored by the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

As traditional Japanese men’s clothing had no pockets personal effects had to be carried in containers (inrō) hung from the belt (obi). To hang the inrō from the obi a long cord (himo) was threaded Read more…

The Heisei Nakamura-za company performs Kabuki at the Lincoln Centre Festival, NYC!

The Lincoln Centre Festival performance of the Kabuki play ‘Kaidan Chibusa no Enoki’ (The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree) took place in NYC from 7th – 12th July 2014 at the Rose Theatre. Having inherited the dream of their father Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, who sadly passed away in December 2012, the performance run was dedicated to him by his sons Nakamura Kankurō VI and Nakamura Shichinosuke II. Kanzaburō helped establish the Heisei Nakamuraza, a portable Read more…

In the future we wonder what might happen if we become invaded by beings who want to ravage the world we try to live in, and Chrome Shelled Regios is one of many from anime history. The characters drive the story, and there are a good few that the viewer might care about, but others they may not as their personalities haven’t been fleshed out enough. It tells the story of several survivors of a future earth that has suffered the effects of living with mutated beasts called Filth Monsters, (in the anime it translates as Contaminoids) and we see the story through the eyes of these survivors who have Read more…

Watanabe manages to evoke the depression associated with being alone at school!

High school life is a daunting time for older teens, but in Shady director Ryohei Watanabe successfully illustrates how bad it can get. The loneliness aspect is a large issue in most Japanese movies about school life and this is a good example of how an isolated person can be influenced by someone else. Here Misa Kumada and Izumi Kiyone are two girls who share the same pain of being loathed and bullied but for different reasons. Misa is seen as an unattractive girl who is the subject of much hatred while Izumi is the pretty girl everyone wants to be and as a result envies. Misa sits at her desk and hides her Read more…

Based on the manga series Karakurizōshi Ayatsuri Sakon written by Masaru Miyazaki!

If you love a good murder mystery anime, definitely check out Ayatsuri Sakonotherwise known as “Puppet Master Sakon.” Despite its airing in 1999, this anime continues to be one of my favorites even today.

There are some animes that hit you so hard, you will never forget them. They take you through twists and turns, and no matter how many times you think you’ve figured out what’s happening and what will happen, each time you are wrong. When it’s all over, you find out you were dead wrong. Another is one of those animes.

This show is the animated version of the manga that was illustrated by Hiro Kiyohara. Both works are Read more…